hance for the employer either. This competition is a sort of insanity.
It gluts the market with cheap goods, and gives a sense of prosperity,
but it is the death of all legitimate, reasonable business. It won't
surprise me if this whole trade of manufacturing underwear becomes a
monopoly, and one man--like O'H----, for instance--swallows up the whole
thing. Lord help the women then, for there'll be no help in man!"

"Suppose co-operation were tried? What would be the effect?"

"No effect, because there isn't confidence enough anywhere to make men
dare a co-operative scheme. Even the workers would distrust it, and a
sharp business man laughs in your face if you mention the word. It
doesn't suit American notions. It might be a good thing if there were
any old-fashioned business men left,--men content with slow profits and
honest dealing,--as my father was, for instance. But he wouldn't have a
ghost of a chance to-day. The whole system of business is rotten, and
there will have to be a reconstruction clean from the bottom, though
it's the men that need it first. We're the maddest nation for money on
the face of the earth, and the race is a more killing one every year.
I'm half inclined to think sometimes that mankind will soon be pretty
much a superfluity, the machines are getting so intelligent; and it may
be these conditions that seem to upset you so are simply means of
killing off those that are not wanted, and giving place to a less
sensitive order of beings. Lord help them, I say again, for there's no
help in man."

The speaker nodded, as if this rather unexpected flight of imagination
was an inspiration in which might lie the real solution of all
difficulties, and hurried away to his waiting niche in the great
competitive system. And as he went, there came to me words spoken by one
of the workers, in whose life hope was dead, and who also had her theory
of any future under to-day's conditions:--

"I've worked eleven years. I've tried five trades with my needle and
machine. My shortest day has been fourteen hours, for I had the children
and they had to be fed. There's not one of these trades that I don't
know well. It isn't work that I've any trouble in getting. It's wages.
Five years ago I could earn $1.50 a day, and we were comfortable. Then
it began to go down,--$1.25, then $1.00. There it stopped awhile, and I
got used to that, and could even get some remains of comfort out of it.
I had to plan to the last half